Paleontologists reconstruct giant prehistoric penguin

Artwork by Chris Gaskin, owner and copyright owner: Geology Museum, University of Otago

Paleontologists have constructed a model of a prehistoric
penguin that stood almost a metre-and-a half-tall when it lived in
what is now New Zealand, approximately 25 million years ago.

Named Kairuku, a Maori word that means "diver who returns with
food," the penguin was reconstructed from fossilised bones that
were collected in 1977 by Dr Ewan Fordyce, a paleontologist from
the University of Otago.

The bones drew the attention of Dr Dan
Ksepka from North Carolina
State University because of the unusual shape of the body.
"Kairuku was an elegant bird by penguin standards, with a slender
body and long flippers, but short, thick legs and feet," says
Ksepka. "If we had done a reconstruction by extrapolating from the
length of its flippers, it would have stood over six-feet tall. In
reality, Kairuku was around four feet-and-two-inches tall or
so."

Aided by North Carolina
Museum of Natural Sciences colleague Dr Paul Brinkman, Ksepka
built the physical model of the bird using two separate fossils and
the skeleton of an existing king penguin. The resultant
reconstruction revealed a penguin that would have been the largest
of the five species known to have lived in New Zealand during the
Oligocene
period. Says Ksepka: "The location was great for penguins in
terms of both food and safety. Most of New Zealand was underwater
at that time, leaving isolated, rocky land masses that kept the
penguins safe from potential predators and provided them with a
plentiful food supply."

The results, which have been published in the Journal of Vertebrate
Paleontology, are hoped will aid the research into the
entire prehistoric penguin population in this area. "This species
gives us a more complete picture of these giant penguins generally,
and may help us to determine how great their range was during the
Oligocene period," says Ksepka.